Rant 11-20-13

The Professor has been busy with many projects lately and the neglected personal life has also cut into what little time the Professor has to jabber on blogs like this. However a few stories have crossed the internet transom that have attracted my attention.

The first one was where JPMorgan Chase – recent beneficiary of a plea bargain deal that let them keep most of the money they stole  -it’s moments like this that I remember the quote ‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” – anyway JPMorgan Chase decided to have a ‘ask an important person twitter event’ this backfired in a major way as word got out and folks did their damnest to be rude and insulting and downright nasty in less than 144 words – or whatever – the professor does not have a twitter account as getting to the point takes me about 3 paragraphs. The idea was quickly shelved but not before they had been exposed to the one thing these folks cannot bear – mockery.  Although in his dark heart the professor thinks some of these folk’s heads are begging for the business end of a pike.

Meantime – McDonald’s in an effort to prove that they have their share of clueless idiots as well has been caught  - on an employee website  in the advice section no less – that a way to deal with stress is not to complain about it was that makes your stress level go up; they also suggested getting  food stamps so you shouldn’t starve on the shit wages being paid – the mind wanders again to an early Bob Newheart routine – the retirement party where the fellow retiring (an accountant), as part of his farewell speech mentions that if it wasn’t for the ‘fifty bucks a week I glommed out of petty cash I wouldn’t have made it on the lousy salary…’  - back to McDonalds -  they also suggested taking a couple of vacations a year;  and – and that singing is a way to reduce stress. The professor has a fantasy of one day walking by a McDonalds and hearing the strains of ‘The International’ or perhaps Moorhead’s “Eat the Rich” from the happy workers. 

We have noted on our travels though the internet that these stories always bring out – folks who write why are you so angry and hostile to the rich.  Followed up typically with a back in the day story and then a rant against their pet peeve as in this case probably the minim wage which they blame for well everything – One fellow was going on abut how back in the day he worked for 75 cents an hour at a soda fountain. Seeing as the minimum wage law is 70 years old now either the fellow was lying or at least 113 years old. And just to note in constant dollars the minimum wage was at its highest in 1968 a year lousy for a bunch of reasons The Tet Offensive, RFK and MLK being killed, riots and Nixon (who has proved worse than we thought more on that some other time) at  least unemployment was a 3.6 percent. (Granted there were some 500,000 young men overseas getting shot at but still it’s a lot better than the 71/2% that is regarded as good these days.)

Meantime the other great monolith  of modern capitalism Wal-Mart  again has found itself behind the 8 ball as in Ohio a store had bins set up for people to donate food for to help ‘associates’ over thanksgiving as some are having a hard time making ends meet.  The professor wonders gee if only they could earn more money or perhaps someone with a lot of money – at last count the Walton family was worth 150 BILLION dollars – could give them oh a bonus or perhaps pay them better? But no – that would cut into profit.

The sick thing is that both of these firms hideously low pay forces their employees to go on food stamps and other programs to get by. These folks aren’t sitting in a hammock; they are trying to do the right thing and are getting screwed by it. These are programs paid for by tax dollars – our tax dollars which are making Wal-Mart’s bottom line better.

The Professor has a modest proposal – no it does not having the Walton family beaten with sticks and being driven from the land before burning their mansions down – temping as that fantasy maybe – simply set  up a law where in if an employer is underpaying folks to the point where they need government assistance – that money comes out of their profits – and to make it sting – as this really is stealing from the government – they get to pay 3 times the amount that goes to their employees in assistance.

I’d suspect the situation would change a bit after that passed. Not that it would because freedom!

The Second Amendment killed Trayvon Martin

The professor has had a long slow bout of the blues as the trial and the verdict in the trail of George Zimmerman came in followed by the victory laps of the hate filled segment of the internet. They seem obscenely glad a black child is dead and that he was shot. It’s a depressing look into the minds of the hateful. The Professor well understands that most of them would never actually kill a black child themselves but they are more than ready to cheer as it is done.

This brings me, tangentially as always to the point of the mini rant here today. Amada Marcotte in her brilliant feminist blog Pandagon points out that in a sane society George Zimmerman would not have been allowed to own a gun given his clouded personal history: arrested on charges of assaulting a police officer, later plea bargained provided he went to mandatory alcohol counseling, getting fired from a bouncers job for being too violent especially with female patrons, and an order of protection filed against him by his ex wife. Amanda notes that in a sane society this man would not be allowed to own anything more dangerous than balls of string. But the Professor would like to point out that even in a semi-sane society a person with this history would not be allowed a concealed carry permit – which brings us to the point here.

To wit, the Second Amendment killed Trayvon Martin.

Or more precisely the gun nut culture NRA absolutists killed Trayvon Martin.

It’s a simple if depressing postulate; that if George Zimmerman had not been armed he would never have gotten out of the car, followed the kid on foot which led to the confrontation. No gun and nobody would have died that night.

Zimmerman’s defenders offer somewhat twisted supporting evidence for this – they continually cite Trayvon’s height, youth, the menace of the hoodie, and blackty black black; if this was, and one can safely assume it was, Zimmerman’s mindset about black people (given George’s large number of calls to the police to report black men in his neighborhood), Zimmerman does not venture from the safety of his car if he’s not packing and the confrontation does not ensue. He had already called the police who may or may not have been in the process of replying to yet another of his calls of a black kid in his neighborhood.  They might well have harassed Trayvon for being what they would have considered to be the wrong area but if they had, Trayvon would not have ended up on a slab in the country morgue office with a tag on his toe.

It was the gun, more precisely Zimmerman’s posse ion of it that night which lead the death.  It turned a stupid and ugly situation into a deadly one.  But that is what guns do – guns make killing easy and as a result, people die.

The case has started a bit of soul searching on the part of Americas about race and our thoughts on it (save for the ones doing the victory laps) which in the long term that might do a great of good.

However in the short term, and I think the short term is measured in years if not decades in this case, people are going to continue to be insane fear crazed, violent, racist fuck-sticks, so what can be done is to limit their access –cough – background checks – cough – to weapons that all too easily turn someone’s paranoia into something deadly. That is something that can be done. Changing the hearts of men is a long a difficult process and one the poltical arena is one ill sutied to.

Rant 5-24-13

It has been a while since the Professor has gone on these pages. Not that there hasn’t been anything worth ranting about but it’s been a busy time of year. Still the recent events in Oklahoma combined with the horrors in Bangladesh has brought forward a rather unfortunate fact of life under capitalism – powers that be will push against any regulations even the most commonsensible ones as the regulations will inevitably cost money which, is after all the most important thing in the world. At least to the folks resisting the changes.

What happens then is some massive disaster that overrides the objections (for the moment) and allows the new rules to be enacted and we discover that no the economy does not collapse because a steam ship has enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew or there are enough emergency exits for the workers at a factory.

In truth the sad story is that most, if not all safety regulations are the result of the number of deaths passing some threshold or more pointedly someone important getting killed.  As for example the Titanic – there had been other sinking of ships with not enough lifeboats but when one combines the massive loss of life and that a couple of Vanderbilt’s ended up as fish food that was changed pretty damn fast.

As a side note I saw a rather odd defense of the number on lifeboats the Titanic in Wikipedia.  The defense was something to the effect that the idea was that the life boats were to serve as ferries to transferring the passengers to a rescue ship (the writer added a snarky comment about the California’s infamous inaction while the ship sank). This strikes the professor as extremely dubious, even supposing the California shown up, it was going to be one really sticky wicket to unload the lifeboats of the passengers and then row back and pick up another load of passengers which would require the boats to be hoisted back up one presumes. (All this was to be done while the ship was actively sinking by the way). The sponsor of this claptrap idea (the Professor tracked it down to the Wall Street Journal opinion page and frankly any idea posted there needs to handled with tongs) also blamed government regulations for not mandating enough lifeboats (the White Star line in hearings after the sinking took this tack while in full CYA mode) which considering that this was 1912 and any regulation proposed would be greeted with thunderous objections by the powers that be is a bit fucking rich.  Made even richer by this being printed in the Wall Street Journal who last I looked regarded any regulations as being the absolute spawn of the Satan.

There is story related in the book Call me if it’s Murder by George Lebrun as told to Edward D Radin. Mr. Lebrun worked with the city coroner for New York city in the early part of the 20^th century – one of the stories he relates in the book was his attempts to have a simple safety lock put on elevator doors so that they would not open unless there was an elevator car at the floor. This was resisted and resisted successfully by builders and elevator manufactures until a prominent New York City Judge fell to a painful death. After that the Legislation was passed in record time and the number of deaths from folks falling down empty elevator shafts when from about 100 a year to none.

Those other folks were simply, per the powers that be, not important enough to spend the money on, but when one of them died, good god man this sort of thing can’t be allowed to happen again.

So now as the bodies are being pulled out of the wreckage in Oklahoma and the burials continue in Bangladesh the story keeps happening - with some variations – it seems that there were actually laws on the books in Bangladesh that mandated that buildings be so constructed that they wouldn’t collapse but again since money is more important than anything else these regulations were, apparently, and I must say that as all the facts are not in yet, ignored.

In a piece of grim irony another factory burned down some few weeks later in Bangladesh but as it was after working hours only the owner and his staff were killed because the building did not  have stairways that would not fill up with smoke.  The way the world works one has to assume that fire safety standards will be improved in Bangladesh before the problem of collapsing buildings is – can’t have bosses dying.  

There a push to ensure safe buildings in Bangladesh however there is the unspoken threat that the 1^st world companies that use Bangladesh as their sweatshop will pull out if money needs to be spent by them.

In Moore Oklahoma the corruption is of a more insidious sort – rather than needing to bribe city officials the builders had the advantage that the city fathers actually thought that  mandating shelters for developments  (and for schools) was a violations of the free market which is their one true god . 

As a result we have 7 dead kids – which could have been worse and scores injured. But taxes are low.

Which is good yes?

Because money is more important than anything else.

Especially unimportant human life.

 

The Tears of a clown and things too good to be true...

Rant 4/26/13

This comes in  two parts – one deals with the opening of a Library in Texas – and the other deals with an economic paper that turns not to as accurate as stated and what if anything will be the result of that.

The George W Bush library opened yesterday with the surviving presidents in attendance and the courtier press attempting is figure out why this man is so gosh darn disliked by folks as he was always nice to them and had a great bar be que.

What the Professor noted is that the last few days were a good reminder of just how insane the Bush years were and how utterly awful they were.

The professor is a busy man and can’t list all the reasons why someone with a working forebrain would find W’s presidency a disaster and the man himself worth despising. Aside from the greatest intelligence failure in this country since Peal Harbor there was letting Osama Ben Laden out of Afghanistan (while incompetence does explain this there may have been a more evil motive behind it) the utterly disastrous invasion of Iraq which followed months of demonizing any opposition to the war (who proved out to be correct about this being a huge stupid mistake) and of course there was the torture, the kidnapping (it has another name but one of the worst trends in America is giving soothing sounding names to ugly things like shooting rockets a people in country we’re not a war with to blow up some we dislike and fuck the wedding party next to them.) and letting New Orleans drown.

And at this ceremony W gave a speech and begins to cry about all the folks who died. And the crown applauded. That W had had a major had in them fucking dying in the first place and that a lot of them would be alive and well (this is not counting the maimed by the by). He was given an ovation by the Texas audience – this has gotten a great deal of play in the press as in the “see he’s not such a shit.” But all the professor could think was these are the tears of a clown who is crying for himself along.

Not that I would wish harm on another human being – well that’s not exactly right but still it is not something to indulge in -  my suggestion for W to prove his sincerity would be ritual seppuku with dick Cheney as a second.  

The second part here involves what was known as the R&R study that ‘proved’ that once government debt went beyond 90 of the GDP it had a negative effect on growth. The publication of this paper back in 2010 was greeted with huzzahs of praise just about everywhere folks wanted to cut deficits here at last was positive proof that what they knew in their hearts that debt was bad was true. That the paper had not been peer reviewed yet, that the authors would not release their data and that a lot of economists questioned and questioned loudly the conclusion the paper mattered not a whit – it was quoted all over the media with a reverence not even seen for Ronald Reagan’s sayings

The trouble is that once someone got a look at the real numbers all sorts of things popped out – selective omissions of data – whole countries not included in the calculations because of a error in excel (which can, one must admit happen to the best of us) so when the numbers where run again it turns out the economy doesn’t fall when the debt is above 90%. It’s been an embarrassing few weeks for the authors who have been on a ‘it’s not really out fault that everybody quoted this and we really didn’t mean that really” tour of the media but the damage has been done. – Krugman wonders what difference this is going to make to the policies in place which have destroyed Greece and have  wrecked the economies of Italy and Spain and Ireland and England (who at last report is heading into another recession)  and threaten to do the same for the rest of Europe and of course here in the US where the sequester is supposed to get the sides together and decide what really needs to get cut out of the budget.

Alas Dr. Krugman – it won’t made a damn bit if difference.

It’s the policies that are inviolate we must cut the deficit – it’s a moral imperative and gut social security while we are at it, this too is a moral imperative. So that an intellectual prop got kicked out from under this edifice shall matter not a whit. Another will be found.

As was noted there were questions about the study the instant it came out but there were hushed aside. Had any of the powers that be had a smattering of humility it might have occurred to them that a study that exactly matched their pre-existing prejudices might well be too good to be true and should be viewed with a careful eye.

As a side note this should have been the rocket that went up when Charles Murray published the Bell Curve wherein he, a lifelong foe of government assistance to the poor – especially the black folks – said he had discovered that the blacks had lower i.q.’s overall which accounted for their continued poor showing economically and that any attempt to help them was a waste of money. Let just say that if the professor ever did a study that found that that his pre-existing prejudices about Yankee fans (that they front running whiners who are compensating for their own life failures by rooting for the most successful franchise in Baseball) he would have to reluctantly presume he’d managed to cook the books someone and toss the study away.  In Murray’s case later research has shown that he was amazingly selective about what data he did and did not use so much so that his conclusions can be safely disregarded. This is of course not even addressing the matter of what if anything I.Q. Tests test other than one’s ability to do I.Q. Tests.

The professor expects that soon another study of something will show that Debts by Governments are always bad things and this will be seized up as if it was holy writ.

Depressing yes but there you are.

One last thing came to the professor attention here – the W library apparently asks the visitor what would you do?  For example what would you do if you were told about the attack in the trade towers?

Well for one thing I would put the book down and try and find out what was going on rather than sitting there like an ass.

Rant 1-31-13 - Unleash the Lunatics!

And the carnage continues – currently somewhere in Alabama – a good place to be from as the saying goes – we enter the 3^rd day of a hostage crisis where a man – said to be a vet – first hijacked a bus then shot the bus driver and then dragged one of the kids into his underground bunker. 

I’m not sure why this lunatic had an underground bunker to go with his AR-15 (the weapon of choice for lunatics) and one assumes small arsenal of weapons or maybe big arsenal. As reports came out this worthy gentleman was already facing gun charges and had been convicted already – one assumes he bought his guns at a gun show. 

There is some talk of this being a case PTSD but in general folks with that turn inward and are mostly a danger to themselves – the bunker and what the folks about him are saying suggest you basic rural fox news paranoia about the Blah people coming. Or zombies. I’m not sure.

One hopes this works out but it illustrates the major problem with the gun debate. Too many fucking gun people are fucking nuts living in some sort of paranoid cloud cookoo land that makes pre batman Gotham city or Mad Max’s desert look like a paradise.

As an example a young woman testified before the Senate the other day that the AR-15 is the gun of choice for young women as it’s light and easy to handle and accurate and then began to spin out a fantasy of her or a young housewife battling 4-5 well armed intruders – with a child at each breast one imagines although that detail was not made clear.

Now because it was the senate and this is America this woman was listened to with gave intensity and probably will be on Fox news for the rest of our lives rather than being quietly escorted to a nice hospital for some rest and observation and having whatever state she lives in child care services take a look in on her kids because this woman is nuttier than a shithouse rate.

And this was a person chosen by the gun folks to give their side of the story – which in seems in brief to be “we’re lunatic white people scared of anyone not a lunatic white person, so we need to be heavily armed.”

It would be comical if the results were not so tragic.

Earlier this week a young man pulled into the wrong driveway in Georgia – the owner of the house came out – armed – fired one shot into the air and then when the young man was pulling out of the driveway and had rolled down the window to apologize – the 69 year old shot him in the head. The young man was Hispanic and the old man was white.

Fucking madness this is.

Rant 1-24-13 - Lance Armstrong Politics

After the last election there were numerous articles in the mainstream media along with much chin wagging in the village talk fests and much toing and frowing about in the blog world over the future course of the GOP.  The demographic tide had finally turned for all to see and the party of angry white men was on the wrong side in their loud dislike of anything not white and angry and male. The talk centered about what was the GOP going to do; would they try not to be such pills about rape and other issues that women, much to the GOP’s surprise care about;  modify their stand on immigration; stop their opposition to gay marriage? Or perhaps maybe just try and be less crazy? It turns out they have decided to opt for another option – The Lance Armstrong Option

Cheat like fucking crazy.

The Virginia state house operating pretty much under the cover of darkness in a series of maneuvers that would have made Machiavelli blush a pushed through a redistricting plan for their congressional districts that ensures pretty much that the Virginia House delegation will be dominated by the GOP for the foreseeable future and is currently working on a plan that will award Virginia’s electoral votes based on who wins said districts and will then award the remaining two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the majority of the districts. The end result of these acts would be that Romney would have gotten most of the states votes despite losing the overall state wide vote.

Several other states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and I believe Ohio are drawing up similar plans – and it’s such a bad idea that I’m surprised that Florida isn’t taking the lead on this.

The one good thing about this is the anti-democratic (small “d “ here) instincts of the GOP are on full display. George – I know less about baseball than climate change – Will has already beat the drum for the idea that not everybody should be voting because Hitler or something.

We are again face to face with the GOP idea that there are real Americans and not Americans – real America lives in small rural towns or suburban developments and is overwhelming straight white and hostile to and scared to death of anything not the exactly same as they are.

The justifications for this garbage are as one might guess very flimsy, one Virginia legislator was quoted as saying something to the effect that unless this was done the rural vote wouldn’t be important.  Allow the Professor to note that such concerns for the minority were not much in evidence after say Reagan’s re-election. Also note the Democratic Party did not try and change the fucking rules.

It is, short of the shelling of some government property off the South Carolina coast some years back the most appalling attempt to undermine the very foundations of the Republic, and a Rubicon that must not be crossed. Not that any of that means a thing to the power crazed pigs of the GOP.

Mini Rant 1-22-13

Not enough time to do everything that needs to be done. However the Professor feels he must note Mitt Romney’s decision not to attend the ingratiation and later saying he wouldn’t be watching on TV, is, one hopes, the last graceless note to a singularly graceless political career.

The Professor also expects that Fox News and the usual gang of centrist villagers will bemoan that Obama has lost the vital ‘rich white Mormons who ran for president’ demographic

Little rant 1-13-14

The plague or the flu kicked The Professor about for a few days so the delicately phrased and tightly written rant from a few days ago is sadly out of date and we’ll just have to make do with this off the cuff slice of gibberish. To wit:

It seems one of the best ways to keep the heat on the NRA and the vast fearful tribe of gun nuts they represent on the defensive is to keep letting them on national television and spout off. They can’t control themselves and within minutes start to threaten violence against unnamed forces coming to take their guns in a manner that makes the average person uneasy with the notion of these folks being armed with rubber bands, never mind the latest in man killing weaponry.

As the bodies cool at Newtown the NRA is ramping up both the “black guy in the white house is coming to take away your guns” and the “gun control = Hitler” memes along with the “bad people will find ways to do bad things so there is no point to trying anything.” Meme which given America’s mythic ‘can do’ attitude is a bit of a poser.  There is of course a difference between acknowledging that a law, which is something drawn up by human beings cannot be perfect and this bullshit. One of the major problems with gun over the last few years is that Congress at the behest of the gun sellers has put in major loopholes with the gun sellers then exploit the hell out of. That is something that can be fixed. At a minimum the Gun Show exemption needs to go bye bye.  And we add vigorous enforcement of said laws is also part of the solution.

I also suspect that the there will a continual attempt to distance gun control from the horror at Newtown. Soon there will be a sorrowful column by I expect David Brooks about how uncivil the gun control folks are and how they are exploiting the tragedy instead of understanding that the right wing is correct and that nothing can be done. This is the kind of thoughtful very important centrism that ends with children being riddled with bullets by a crazy person with a rifle. And I would counsel the gun control folks to continue to beat the NRA and their fellow travelers over the head with this very dirty stick (to quote Seven Days in May) as this incident (unlike the others) has changed the landscape. Let’s not go back as that merely sets the stage for another horror.